people would put money into these plans and grow tax deferred and the benefit of growth with the tax deferral is significant. the goal is stay away from dipping into those plans, right? and however, you have a current economy with sluggish gdp growth, languishing employment market that just continues. so now people are going, i think that the "washington post" did a study that one in four people now have tapped into their retirement 401(k) plans in order to pay like you said, everyday expenses. one of the things to think about is, and i know arthel, this isn't the greatest thing, but maybe a second part-time job. maybe one thing rather than tapping into that, you can earn extra income if you have the ability to do that. another way to do this potentially is if you have a strong credit score and you have some equity in your home, you could take out a home equity line of credit and write off the interest payments. interest rates are very low at this current time. so you can take advantage of the fact that they are low when borrowing against your home, if you have equity in your home. i